The liner does two things: it allows urine to pass through, but as it is non absorbent, it cannot return, thus keeping baby's bottom a bit drier. Also, it catches any poo, and the whole thing is then easy to drop into the toilet for flushing. While a baby is breastfed and before it is weaned, any poo will not normally smell offensive but - equally - it will be very runny. The best liners for preweaned babies are the Bambinex liners. The liner may well not catch all of this, although if you have a good nappy and wrap you should not get staining onto clothes. Even if you do get leaks, bear in mind that disposables often leak runny poo at this age as well. Once your baby is weaned, the liner will be much more effective at catching all the poo. In the meantime, if you have chosen your nappy well, this should catch most of it, so you may just have to rinse your nappies quite a lot in the early days.
Liners sold in high street stores like Mothercare are usually not flushable. Any liner that is flushable will say so clearly - if it doesn't, it isn't.
Flushable paper liners have long been obtainable by mail order from nappy retailers (including The Nappy Lady!), but this does require a degree of preplanning to ensure you do not run out. Most recently, some branches of the larger stores like John Lewis, Babies R Us, Waitrose, Sainsbury and Tesco have started to stock either the PHP liners or bioliners on a roll, which helps. This may currently be a regional trial thing, but if your local branch does not stock them, they should be able to get them in for you on request at Customer Services. A pack of 200 flushable liners would normally last about a month. Some people do in fact wash and reuse their liners a few times (up to 5) before they get too thin and have to be discarded.
You will find disposable liners are very strong, and do not tear or split, however wet or full they are. However, if your main reason for using real nappies is the cost, then you might want to look at washable liners, to save on the (approx) £4 a month cost of flushable ones.
Washable liners come in a number of materials: fleece, cotton, polyester and silk being the most common. I am a big fan of fleece liners - follow the link above to find out why. I find them much easier to use than flushable ones, especially once baby has got to the wriggly stage, when paper liners simply won't stay in place. There is no right or wrong way up with either a fleece or a paper liner. However, the polyester ones are slightly "furry" on one side, and this goes face down into the nappy to stop the liner sliding around; on the other side, they are shiny and non absorbent, which goes face up and so is an effective stay dry layer.
Undoubtedly, however, a squidgy poo is slightly more of a pain to deal with if you have washable rather than flushable liners, but that is only so if the flushable liner in fact caught all of the poo, which I find they often do not.
Washable liners do keep baby amazingly dry, and are a very good idea if your baby is subject to repeated rashing (assuming you have ruled out other causes of this). (Raw) Silk is the most gentle of these fibres, and is particularly suitable for babies who suffer from eczema. However, it does have a bit of a funny smell when wet, which some people do not like, and others do not even notice.
Once your baby gets to the wriggly stage, you may find a flushable liner does not stay put very well, and so is less effective. To counter this, - when you have fastened the nappy - feel inside to straighten out the liner as much as possible before putting on the cover. Very often, it shifts as part of the process of being put on, rather than through later wriggling - but once it is no longer in place, wriggling will make its position worse. The sitting up method of putting on a popper nappy solves this problem on the whole.
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June 2010 - The Nappy Lady
Added on 15/05/2007 22:54:41